New to Raid

All I have is the is the 'pdf' manual I downloaded from asus. Specs and
jumper settup and such.

 > You need the book that came with the motherboard. Promise won't even talk
to
 > you about on-board raid controllers and from my experience, Asus won't
talk
 > to you about anything. It's all in the booklet and it's pretty easy to
 > understand<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New to Raid 

In article <wcT3e.6$D53.99@news.uswest.net>, "DaveJr"
<davesbrain.TakeThisOut@qwest.net> wrote:

 > hi group,
 >
 > What good resources are there for how to set up raid? Just got A7V from
 > friend with the Promise raid controller.

The A7V PDF manual I have here, doesn't have a section on the RAID.

This link suggests the A7V133 motherboard uses the same Promise chip.

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://web.archive.org/web/20020724132637/http://www.lumberjacker.de/Downloads/downloads.html" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20020724132637/http://www.lumberjacker.de/D...loads/d</a>

in which case, download this manual and see section 5.4 . At
least this will give you some hints on how to use it.

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt133a/a7v133/a7v133-105.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt133a/a7v133/a7v133-105.pdf</a>

You can see some differences here, between Fasttrak Lite RAID and
normal Fasttrak RAID, as seen on a separate Promise controller card.

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://groups.google.ca/groups?threadm=SBf28.1042%24gW4.958395%40news1.rdc1.mi.home.com" target="_blank">http://groups.google.ca/groups?threadm=SBf28.1042%24gW4.958395%40news1...c1.mi.h</a>

The Lumberjacker hacked BIOS are archived here.

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.storage-raid-forum.de/download/?url=&cid=2" target="_blank">http://www.storage-raid-forum.de/download/?url=&cid=2</a>

To see what a Promise manual looks like, here is a sample.
Chapter 4 shows the BIOS setup. I don't know if this manual
exactly corresponds to the chip on your board, but it is the
best I can find now. There may have been more stuff on the
Promise site which has been moved or removed.

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="ftp://ftp.promise.com/Controllers/IDE/FastTrak/Manual/FastTrak.zip" target="_blank">ftp://ftp.promise.com/Controllers/IDE/FastTrak/Manual/FastTrak.zip</a>

You might also want to do a Google search and see whether this
chip was reliable, and what versions of RAID BIOS worked best
with it. I don't know if there were any problems or not, but
since it is your data, you may want to look into it before
putting valuable data on there.

HTH,
Paul<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New to Raid 

"DaveJr" <davesbrain RemoveThis @qwest.net> writes:
 > hi group,
 > What good resources are there for how to set up raid? Just got A7V from
 > friend with the Promise raid controller.

Speaking from memory of my experience with the P4T533:

* Copy the Promise MBFastTrack Lite 133 drivers from the ASUS CD to a
floppy disk.

* Connect up a pair of drives to the onboard raid connectors and set
the onboard jumper for raid.

* Boot the system and hit <ctrl-F> to enter the FastTrack RAID
configuration utility and configure either RAID 0 or RAID 1.

* I had a pair of Maxtor ULTRA ATA 133 drives, so I booted into the
MaxBlast CD and partitioned and formatted the drive for NTFS.

* I then re-booted into the WinXP setup disk with the drivers disk I
made above in the floppy drive.

* Hit F6 to tell WinXP to load the additional drivers from the floppy.

* Hit S to select exactly which adapter driver to load.

* Finished the install and set the BIOS to boot from the "SCSI/ATA"
adapter.

I can't imagine that it's too much different for other onboard Promise
RAID controllers.

--
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald RemoveThis @forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New to Raid 

This is an A7V rev.1.02 board. And I have no mobo driver cd. I bought it
from a friend with an Athlon 950 and 512ram for a whopping $20.

 > Speaking from memory of my experience with the P4T533:
 >
 > * Copy the Promise MBFastTrack Lite 133 drivers from the ASUS CD to a
 > floppy disk.
 >
 > * Connect up a pair of drives to the onboard raid connectors and set
 > the onboard jumper for raid.
 >
 > * Boot the system and hit <ctrl-F> to enter the FastTrack RAID
 > configuration utility and configure either RAID 0 or RAID 1.
 >
 > * I had a pair of Maxtor ULTRA ATA 133 drives, so I booted into the
 > MaxBlast CD and partitioned and formatted the drive for NTFS.
 >
 > * I then re-booted into the WinXP setup disk with the drivers disk I
 > made above in the floppy drive.
 >
 > * Hit F6 to tell WinXP to load the additional drivers from the floppy.
 >
 > * Hit S to select exactly which adapter driver to load.
 >
 > * Finished the install and set the BIOS to boot from the "SCSI/ATA"
 > adapter.
 >
 > I can't imagine that it's too much different for other onboard Promise
 > RAID controllers.
 >
 > --
 > Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412
 > Ronald Cole <ronald DeleteThis @forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142
 > President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152
 > My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New to Raid 

Well, then download the drivers from ASUS's website. AFAICT, whatever
is on the ASUS CD can be found on their website... latest versions, too!

"DaveJr" <davesbrain RemoveThis @qwest.net> writes:
 > This is an A7V rev.1.02 board. And I have no mobo driver cd. I bought it
 > from a friend with an Athlon 950 and 512ram for a whopping $20.
 >
  >> Speaking from memory of my experience with the P4T533:
  >>
  >> * Copy the Promise MBFastTrack Lite 133 drivers from the ASUS CD to a
  >> floppy disk.
  >>
  >> * Connect up a pair of drives to the onboard raid connectors and set
  >> the onboard jumper for raid.
  >>
  >> * Boot the system and hit <ctrl-F> to enter the FastTrack RAID
  >> configuration utility and configure either RAID 0 or RAID 1.
  >>
  >> * I had a pair of Maxtor ULTRA ATA 133 drives, so I booted into the
  >> MaxBlast CD and partitioned and formatted the drive for NTFS.
  >>
  >> * I then re-booted into the WinXP setup disk with the drivers disk I
  >> made above in the floppy drive.
  >>
  >> * Hit F6 to tell WinXP to load the additional drivers from the floppy.
  >>
  >> * Hit S to select exactly which adapter driver to load.
  >>
  >> * Finished the install and set the BIOS to boot from the "SCSI/ATA"
  >> adapter.
  >>
  >> I can't imagine that it's too much different for other onboard Promise
  >> RAID controllers.
  >>
  >> --
  >> Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412
  >> Ronald Cole <ronald RemoveThis @forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142
  >> President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152
  >> My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B
  >>
 >
 >

--
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald RemoveThis @forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New to Raid